Monthly Archives: December 2014

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Having lived, loved and taught in England, your author has a special fondness in his heart for almost everything British (with the exceptions of the food and weather), but most especially her people. It’s an endlessly historic and fascinating nation full of wonderfully accented, polite and thin folks. As The Stranger once said, “and in English, too.”

1. Pags to Penske: The hottest free agent available this off season signed with the often froggy and widely reviled Team Penske. This is easily the biggest story of the year as well as the most unsettling for other teams. Plus there’s the fact that Pags is a likeable Frog, or was until turning coats to the dark side. IndyCar needs more villains, so the Frenchman’s foreign legion service for the Captain will be entertaining to watch.

May 25, 2008 was a gorgeous day in Speedway, Indiana with sunshine and a large crowd in attendance for the ninety second running of the Indianapolis 500. As we made our way to our traditional first turn seats in stand B, row Z the sights, sounds and electricity of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing fully lived up to their billing.

Target Just Got Smaller: In particularly ominous news out of North Carolina appropriately enough, retail giant Target is reducing its sponsorship of TCGR’s IndyCar effort after 25 years in IndyCar racing. This despite a spokesman attempting to downplay the horrible news, saying it’s “just reallocating dollars” according to an AP article. Apparently funding for Indianapolis 500 winner Tony Kanaan’s #10 car will be cut, though he will return sponsored by NTT Data. The most stinging part of the news is that the funds are going to NASCAR, as well as tv spots with Scott Dixon and Kyle Larson. This is not a positive sign for the health of the series, though not everyone will shed tears for Chip the Hutt.

In our ongoing efforts toward the Hollywood-ization of IndyCar – the tinselly celebrity, emotionally uplifting and magical parts of Hollywood, not its utterly out of ideas, irrelevancy and self indulgent aspects – we bring you the latest comparison of an IndyCar champion to his movie star doppelganger. While the similarities are striking in these two enigmatic stars’ countenances, there are a number of other parallels between Ryan Hunter-Reay and Matthew Modine, apart from the fact that many fans around the world “love them long time.”

Rule Book Revisions: A number of changes to IndyCar’s rule book were announced Tuesday amidst the usual outcry from fans. Double points will be awarded for the Indianapolis 500 and the Sonoma finale only, causing a torrent of upset and gnashing of teeth on Twitter. This is a reflection of displeasure with the finale’s location as much as the attempt to manufacture championship drama. It means the triple crown for 500 mile events sadly is gone. Mercifully there will be no standing starts in 2015, as the “fastest drivers on the planet” couldn’t seem to master them despite numerous, often aborted attempts. Then there was the inaugural Indy Grand Prix start, which spelt the end of both standing starts and quite possibly Sebastian Saavedra’s brief IndyCar career.